Calling Col Oners...

[JonBrave]

I know it's easy to snipe/criticise. So I tried to think of a "fair" question to ask before posting...

Is there any Col I player out there who even thinks this is as good as the original?

I'd like to know if there is! Seems to me, those who played I (inc. me) are just disappointed. For those who never did and enjoy this one, good luck, just shows how good that game was 14 years ago.

Hmmphhh

 

[Reveilled]

I don't, but it's not quite as simple as it being worse.

Colonization 2 seems a little confused in how it is constructed. If it had been a straight up graphical update, I would have been happy, but it's not. If it had been a proper sequel, rebuilt from the ground up, I would have been happy too.

The problem, as I see it, is that it is a remake of Colonization 1, with some changes. Some are good, and some are bad. Some are just buggy. But there's not enough.

I enjoy Colonization 1, but while I do honestly think it had fewer things wrong with it than Colonization 2, I am fully aware that my enjoyment of it comes through nostalgia. If I had never played it before and sat down to play it today, I probably wouldn't like it. Games have come a long way since its release, and there's not enough there in the first game for it to be commercially released today.

As such, when I play the original, I lower my expectations, and forgive the bad graphics, the bad AI, the lack of multiplayer, the hoops I have to jump through to get it to run.

If Colonization 2 was just a graphical update, I could still do that, though anyone who had never played the original wouldn't see it that way.

But it's not, so I come to Colonization 2 looking at it through the same eyes that I use to appraise games like Team Fortress 2 or Red Alert 3. What I see is a game with too few features, and too many problems.


Colonization 2 falls right in the middle when it comes to being a sequel. Too much changed to be a simple remake, but not good enough to stand on its own as a game released in 2008.

It failed to meet the expectations of my inner seven year old, and it failed to meet the expectations of my outer twenty year old. Which is a damn shame.

 

[JonBrave]

You say about the original's bad graphics. Sad thing is, I actually found them all clearer than now

 

[Shurdus]

When this game gets sorted out, it is WAY better than the original I think. If the annoyances are gone, then I can see this getting a lot of playing time again.

I for one like where they took Col. Maybe the game anno 2008 could use a little bit more diversity and complexity, but they stayed faithful to the original and I can respect that too.

Should they spice the diplomacy up a little and if they take another look at the economics system then I will be happy. Right now building an economy is not worth it as you have very little time and the rewards are not good enough. Selling guns and horses to natives is more lucrative then anything. Sell tons of muskets to non-neighboring natives and buy cannons and horses, get newspapers up, and build liberty bells at the last moment and you will eat the REF up alive. Any other way and you are just making it more difficult.

I do not think that is the way the game should be played and they should have another look at it.

 

[Shurdus]

You say about the original's bad graphics. Sad thing is, I actually found them all clearer than now

Eh?

Now they are really crisp, and the zooming helps tons. There are lots of visual aids now, like placing tokens on important sites or on units, so you will have a much better view.

The city screen looks a bit different but after getting used tio it for a bit I think they did an amazing job.

 

[cephalo]

Colonization I definately had it's flaws. This new version is a much tighter and well designed game, in spite of some bugs that are always going to be there in games.

The reason that I prefer Col1 is because it had atmosphere. The game had multiple phases. You weren't even thinking about independance when you got off the boat. There was much more of a challenge from other Europeans and natives, and you simply can't include all of that in a 300 turn game. The independance game here is a good game and I enjoy it, but that was only a part of Colonization I.

 

[JonBrave]

Well, so far, I do respect that there seem to be posts in this forum from some who find it better than Col I. I'm surprised, but fair enough..

 

[Bad Brett]

I think the problem with modern games is that they rely too much on graphics so that they forget what's really important. This game has tons of unit and features, but most of them are completely useless. Why mess around with Ranchers that can breed 8 horses per turn when you can buy 2000 horses and store them in Wagon Trains? Why wasting time on building Cigar Factories and educating Tobacco Planters when you can make a lot more money by selling Muskets and Horses to the Indians.

 

[SerriaFox]

$29 dollars

I don't think even frixas thought it deserved to be a stand alone game for that price.

I think they put it out, just to stop everyone from complaining about there never being a sequel. I would also venture to say that this product will get very little official support going forward. I just don't think frixas' heart is in the game.

 

[GodBen]

I think they put it out, just to stop everyone from complaining about there never being a sequel.

I think they put it out to stop long-time Civ fans complaining about CivRev. If that's the case then they succeed as we're all complaining about how broken this game is.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Why wasting time on building Cigar Factories and educating Tobacco Planters when you can make a lot more money by selling Muskets and Horses to the Indians.

Because cigar-armed Indians aren't lethal.

Now seriously, at this point, I still like the original better. I trust the remake will be fixed and all, but it's simply lacking a lot of the charm and flavour I loved about the original.

I'd bet the devs aren't going to fundamentally change the design through patches, so despite the possibility this might end up being a very good game, it might very well never top its predecessor for me. I hope it does, I really do, but outside of unofficial modding, it doesn't seem likely.

To be honest, I wanted little more than a graphical update. Perhaps a better interface and a tweak here and there, but nothing more.

 

[Gliese 581]

I had higher expectations from this game than the first and are more knowledgeable as to how to exploit the mechanics, that is probably why I'm not as obsessed with the new version.

 

[strollen]

I had higher expectations from this game than the first and are more knowledgeable as to how to exploit the mechanics, that is probably why I'm not as obsessed with the new version.

I agree. I was only a minor fan of the first one, so I think CivCol is better, but it needs some fairly major revisions for me to say it has great replay value.

 

[dalgo]

To compare the two games is difficult. If your criteria is how they stand up against other games of their era then the original game would win hands down. However if you compare the two directly, head to head as they now stand, then I would rather play Col2 any day. No single bug in the present game is as bad as the trade route bug in the original which meant I had to move every wagon train manually for the whole game.

I will keep Col1 on my hard drive (it's not taking up much space after all ) and I might start the odd game for nostalgia but for serious gameplay I much prefer Col2.

 

[Freddy K]

Strange how well people seem to remember the original, the few things i recall is how disappointed I was that the victory finale consisted of a single picture. Still I liked it a lot, much more than the Civ games, which always had outdated graphics, they also were quickly outdone by RTS games (Dune 2) and games that copied the rize of technology (Empire Earth) or featured a blend of both (Medieval: Total War).

Now that i got that off my chest, the new Colonization is an awesome game for the first couple of dozen hours. But I too hate to have to produce liberty bells right from the start, just to win the race for the Founding Fathers. Bells also offer an easy way to dispose of "Natives". Why not have buffalo hunting parties and cloths drenched in pox germs or at least have to fight/defend?

There just isn't much depth, and there is no focus on the economic part, which sets this game apart from the average conquest game. The economy is also silly (there is no possibility to be self sustained): each time I protest a tax increase I can't trade the type of item, so independence means I cannot trade at all? There is tax and there is (export) tollage, surely independence cannot remove the latter.

 

[Reveilled]

To compare the two games is difficult. If your criteria is how they stand up against other games of their era then the original game would win hands down.

Yeah, this was what I was trying to say, but you managed to fit it into one sentence. Colonization 1 was one of the greatest strategy games of the early 90s. Colonization 2 doesn't really hold up the same way against the other strategy games of the last few years, or likely of those to come.

However if you compare the two directly, head to head as they now stand, then I would rather play Col2 any day. No single bug in the present game is as bad as the trade route bug in the original which meant I had to move every wagon train manually for the whole game.

I never noticed this bug. What was it?

I will keep Col1 on my hard drive (it's not taking up much space after all ) and I might start the odd game for nostalgia but for serious gameplay I much prefer Col2.

Myself, I've had it on a pen drive attached to my keyring for a few years now, so I can play it wherever I end up.

 

[dalgo]

I never noticed this bug. What was it?

This annoyed me for years in Col 1 because I couldn't figure out what was happening. My trade routes would work OK for a while, then the wagon would stop unloading. It just continued round my colonies picking up goods until it was full. It was only later that I found out what triggered it - when you refused a tax increase and the king boycotted your goods in Europe it also applied to your automatic trades in your own colonies! As my main strategy was to keep tax at zero I often had a lot of goods boycotted so this bug made it too difficult to use the auto trade routes at all.

In Col2 I'm have to accept these damn taxes because I haven't found any way of avoiding them yet, but I'm working on it.

 

[cephalo]

I never noticed this bug. What was it?

One that I remember is that in Col1 units could not occupy the same tile, and with all the natives and foreign troops all over your territory, It was basically impossible to use your road network or automate trade routes as the wagon would try to path around all these roadblocks. You could never know when a wagon would reach it's destination.

 

[Antilogic]

Okay, I guess I'm in the minority.

I was a happy Col1 player, and I love Col2. Sure, it's a slightly different game, but I still love it. I've learned a few new strategies, and now I can win while having fun with it. And it has all the convenience of the Civ4 engine (anyone remember moving a stack of 20 dragoons when preparing for independence or attacking the REF? I sure do. Or how about those damned foreign powers sitting outside your colonies 24-7? What the f*** were they doing?).

 

[Shylock]

I think they put it out to stop long-time Civ fans complaining about CivRev. If that's the case then they succeed as we're all complaining about how broken this game is.

I'm not. I like it.